So.

It's been so long! I'm so sorry I haven't updated before now! I hope you're well, and I hope this chapter doesn't totally disappoint you, especially after such a long wait for it!

If you're still reading, thanks so much! Now that I'm sort of back in the groove, I'm hoping I can stay in it a while. :)

ssg.x.

CHAPTER 10

Tamaki's eyes were the colour of lavender, and filled with immeasurable kindness and a child-like wonder Haruhi couldn't help but fall in love with. She'd often wondered, though, if she wanted to be with Tamaki, or if she wanted to be Tamaki.

She had noticed the changes in herself brought on by being a part of his life, of letting him be a part of hers. She had a lust for living she'd never really had before. Things she once regarded as frivolous wastes of time became so much less so as time went on. She had fun with Tamaki, fun with her friends – the kind of fun she was never able to truly embrace during her mother's illness and subsequent death.

But the truth was that there had been little growth on Tamaki's end. She didn't want him to change exactly; she loved him just as he was. But sometimes she wished that he would realize that everyday couldn't be a trip to the beach, artificial or otherwise, without feeling like she was scolding him with the reminder as if he were a child. She didn't need to be rescued from hard work. She enjoyed hard work. Well, hard work with a purpose, as oppose to the afternoons she occasionally had to spend in the music room painstakingly sewing tiny replacement beads onto whatever outlandish costume Tamaki had decided she'd be wearing that day.

God…

She just had a (mercifully) fleeting vision of herself in a slip sitting in a massive hotel suite affixing pearl beading to the bodice of a wedding dress specifically chosen out for her by Tamaki.

She couldn't wait until after the wedding. The chaos would ebb, and she could go back to…

Go back to what? Go back to normal? The wedding was supposed to be a celebration of life moving forward – the life Haruhi would be sharing with Tamaki. Whatever "normal" was going to be hadn't yet been established. The thought of that alone made Haruhi dizzy. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, willing the butterflies in her stomach to settle down.

The inside of the car Hikaru and Haruhi ducked into was white, the outside a bold red. She knew very little about cars, simply because she'd never had much of an interest in them and was only ever in them intermittently, but she assumed the interior of the car was leather. Settling back against the seat, she immediately worried that the mud on her sneakers would make a mess of the floor mats, that the buttons of Hikaru's jacket might bite into the soft, white leather and mark it up. She mentally hurled any obstacle, insignificant as it was, between herself and the kiss she knew was only inevitable.

She knew it was inevitable because it hadn't even been ten minutes since their last kiss, and already she felt like her skin was too tight for her, for everything happening inside of her.

The occasional eruption of thunder would cause the small windows lining the walls of the garage to rattle in their frames. The flashes of accompanying lightning would briefly bleed into Hikaru's eyes, igniting their yellow ochre and reminding her why they'd captivated her so before the light would recede back into the night sky once again.

There was a calmness in those eyes that she found soothing. Maybe it was because Hikaru had already come to terms with his feelings for her. As he'd said, he had been coming to term with those feelings for four years. He'd already accepted that she and Tamaki were planning their futures around each other, had promised themselves to each other.

I haven't, she thought.

…yet, she added.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't hear Hikaru begin to speak. He reached out and lightly touched her shoulder to get her attention, and she nearly leapt out of her skin.

"The thunderstorm," Hikaru said, starting over again. "They don't scare you the same way they used to?"

Haruhi's ears grew hot despite her shivering. Hikaru had turned on the heat in the car, but it wasn't enough. The sweater she was wearing was soaked through, and she was too self-conscious to take it off.

"Thunderstorms still scare me. But I was losing you…and that was scarier," she said simply. Hikaru nodded slowly, his face giving away nothing as far as what he thought about her reply went. Quietly, she said, "I'm going to take off my sweater."

Hikaru didn't look at her. "Tell me you aren't doing this because you're afraid you'll lose me, or because you need a temporary distraction from the wedding. We both deserve better than that. You won't lose me, okay? Friends forever, remember? You don't have to –"

Haruhi's brows knitted together. "I would never do that." Hikaru smirked at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Okay, yes – I took my frustration and my wedding jitters out on you, but do you really think I'd –"

She didn't know how to end that question.

"I'm sorry," Hikaru said. "I know you'd never…"

He didn't know how to finish his thought either, apparently. Haruhi began pulling her arms out of the sleeves of her sweater. It was heavy and the moisture had it clinging to her like an octopus. Hikaru watched her struggling for a minute or two before finally reaching out to help her yank the sweater over her shoulders and head. When she looked up, finally free of the wet, musty-smelling wool, her face was only inches from Hikaru's. The camisole she wore was a plain, powder blue – no lace trim or bows. She wondered what Hikaru saw when he looked at her. She couldn't have smelled all that great just then, but she must have looked much worse.

"If I tell you you're beautiful right now…that would be corny, right?" he said.

Haruhi chuckled softly. "Not to mention a huge lie."

Hikaru laughed, too, seeming to appreciate the brief escape from the awkwardness of the situation they found themselves in now.

"I've missed this, Hikaru."

"What?"

"Laughing with you."

"We never did much of that when it was just the two of us, though," Hikaru replied, suddenly looking thoughtful. "Kaoru has always been our go-between. He's the one who plans our outings, who drags us along matter how much we complain that we have more important things to do. Hell, I'm pretty sure he's the reason you're here with me right now," he muttered.

Haruhi shook her head. "That's not true."

Hikaru looked away, muttering, "You have no idea."

She decided she would ask him to explain what he meant later. Because just then, all she wanted to do was kiss him, and she knew the only one responsible for that was Hikaru.

He finally glanced in Haruhi's direction, the emotional turmoil in his eyes causing her heart to clench. "I want to be the only reason you're here more than anything," he whispered. "I don't want to be the guy who stole his best friend's fiancée."

She wanted to tell him that the word "stole" suggested she was Tamaki's property – a doll that had no will of its own, and that Hikaru should know better than anyone that she doesn't do what anyone expects of her. As Hikaru and his brother pointed out time and time again, Haruhi was not your typical shojo heroine.

I'm no shojo heroine, she thought. I kissed him first, and I did it with my eyes closed.

"Hikaru," she whispered.

"Yeah?"

She carefully climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs. He watched her, a look of sheer bewilderment on his face, arms lying dead at his sides. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her cheek against his shoulder.

"Let's go back to the house. We'll pretend none of this ever happened. We'll get a good night's rest tonight, and tomorrow we can head into town and do some shopping, then maybe have some lunch. Then, if you want – "

"No."

She almost didn't hear him, the word was spoken so quietly. She could feel his entire body tense in her arms.

"Hikaru –"

"We talk too fucking much," he hissed before kissing her so fiercely she cried out in surprise. The sound was lost between his lips and hers, as was their hesitation, it seemed. She encouraged his sweet assault on her mouth by clutching his shoulders and pulling him deeper into their kiss. She nipped at his lip with her teeth hard enough to draw blood, and he pulled back a little.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I…I don't know why I did that."

"I do," he said. He leaned in slowly, tilting his head to one side, his gaze shifting between her eyes and her mouth. Haruhi stopped breathing, all her focus on Hikaru and what he was going to do next. The very tip of his tongue lightly traced the seam of her lips, lulling her into a breathless trance before drawing a sharp gasp and most of his name from her when he sunk his teeth into her. Rational thought paid a brief, unwelcome visit as she wondered why she enjoyed the pain, why it had her tangling her fingers in Hikaru's hair and fitting her body against his. If her name wasn't on every breath that left him between kisses, she probably would have forgotten it. Eventually rational thought was swept back into the recesses of Haruhi's mind when Hikaru broke away and gathered her up in his arms so he could lie them both across the backseat.

"We…we don't have to do…what I'm thinking of doing," he said, panting.

Haruhi nodded, "I know."

"I mean…I know that back when we were in high school I used to make all those dirty jokes and innuendos, so it might seem like I'm obsessed with…"

"Sex," Haruhi blurted. She immediately winced, embarrassed by the outburst.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"You know, a lot of people still believe college-aged men think about sex every seven seconds, but that's a myth that was debunked years ago," she said, hoping to diffuse some of the tension between them. Sexual tension, she thought, blushing furiously. "I mean, can you imagine someone thinking about sex eight thousand times a day? How could they possibly function?"

Hikaru drew closer to her. He began softly kissing the underside of her jaw. His hand left the small of her back and she found herself eagerly anticipating where on her body she'd feel his touch next.

"More recent studies suggest that the number of times men think about sex in a day is closer to thirty or thirty-five, while women think about sex maybe twenty times a day."

Oh my God, Haruhi. Shut up already. What are you doing?

Hikaru nuzzled her neck and slipped one of the straps of her camisole over her shoulder. The hands exploring her body were no longer trembling. They seemed to become more self-assured and purposeful the longer she prattled on.

"It sort of makes me wonder, though, how many times over the course of a day a man and a woman might think about sex at exactly the same time…like, about having it with each other, I mean."

"Well, I mean there are so many other things that would need to be factored in to figure that out," Hikaru murmured, his lips at her ear. His hand was on her upper thigh, squeezing gently. She could barely remember what they were talking about.

"Like, when you say men think about sex thirty-five times a day, I'm assuming you mean during waking hours. But how many waking hours? And are we talking part-time or full-time students? Working or not working?"

"I see what you mean," Haruhi said, voice trembling. Hikaru nudged his knee between both of hers. She let out a long, slow breath as she carefully brought one leg over his hip, snaking it around his thigh. "Can I ask you something?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Why aren't you nervous?"

"I'm not going to be able to tell you without sounding like a host."

Haruhi smiled against his mouth. "Try," she said.

"I've loved you quietly for so long now…and then not so quietly," he said softly. "I've kissed you a thousand times in my head, slept beside you a hundred times, and proposed at least a dozen. And now I've kissed you for real, I'm lying beside you for real, and no matter what happens next – whether we kiss a thousand more times, or never again, whether you crawl into bed beside me tonight, or untangle yourself right now, leave this car and never look back…"

His eyes darkened, and he frowned.

"Hikaru? What is it?"

He pulled her tightly to him, burying his face in her hair. Haruhi's eyes momentarily widened with surprise, but she brought her arms around him and held him with a mutual intensity.

"I can't finish that last sentence honestly," he explained hoarsely. "If you left right now, if you never looked back, I think I'd die."

"Hikaru…" she whispered, her heart aching for him.

"Haruhi, what I said before…"

"Yes?"

He pulled back to look her in the eye. She couldn't control the shiver that moved through her body. For the first time she could ever remember, she wasn't looking into the eyes of her old friend. She was looking into the eyes of a young man in love with her. She was looking into the eyes of her lover's rival.

"I don't want to be the guy who stole his best friend's fiancée," he said again.

Haruhi swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. She was about to respond when Hikaru spoke again.

"I don't want to be, but I will be."